Private Search Engines

Cost: Free DuckDuckGo is a search engine with a focus on privacy. This search engine often produces better quality search results than Google. However, with more obscure searches Google is more comprehensive. So as a backup, you can use StartPage which allows you to search privately on Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Private Web Browsers

The Problem: Web browsers like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Safari are not privacy-friendly.

The Solution: Use a secure, open-source web browser like Firefox with privacy-mode turned on.

Private Email

The Solution: Use FastMail instead, and use MailDrop to generate temporary email addresses. You can use an independent email service like FastMail. Based in Australia, the service has been running for 15 years, and they have a good privacy policy regarding email storage. Their prices start at $10 per year. Fastmail is designed for email privacy not email anonymity. The company states:

we use encrypted SMTP for sending your mail when the receiving server supports it

Encrypted Email Providers

Avoiding Spam

MailDrop is an open-source service that allows you to create temporary emails, thus allow you to control spam. You can give these emails out companies that you don’t yet trust. Trashmail is similar to MailDrop — but it offers a paid service with additional filtration features.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

The Problem: Your ISP and other organizations can monitor your online activities.

The Solution: Use a virtual private network (VPN) service like ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) service that is fast and reliable. It’s my top pick for a VPN (see more details here). Prices are $58 per year, or $9 per month.

Private Instant Messaging

The Problem: Your text messages are not encrypted and may be recorded.

Cost: Free Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and privacy. It works for user seeking casual privacy. If you need more privacy than Telegram, see these apps: ChatSecure is a free Android app that provides secure text messaging. The same app is called Signal on iPhones. Wickr is a free app (iPhone and Android) that allows you to send self-destructing, private messages to your friends. You can send text messages, video and audio messages.

Password Managers

Password managers allow you to create strong, unique passwords for all your website accounts. They can also automatically log you into websites, thus preventing key-logging (attempts to capture your keystrokes and hence your passwords). Bitwarden is an excellent open source password manager.

Privacy-Friendly Operating Systems

I recommend the Linux operating system. This free OS has many useful privacy features and applications. If you’ve never used Linux before, I recommend using the Elementary OS distribution. It was designed to replicate features found in Windows and OS X. Linux distributions are maintained by technical users around the world, so they tend to be less vulnerable to malware. You can get a computer with Linux pre-installed from a vendor such as ThinkPenguin (just tell them to install Elementary OS on your computer).

Privacy-Friendly Mobile Devices

Most mobile devices are not designed with privacy in mind. If you need an extra level of security, you can make use of a device like the Blackphone. This smartphone has it’s own privacy-centric operating system. Thus, the phone does not leak data to a carrier. It has comes with an encrypted phone service, secure messaging and many other security-oriented features. It sells for around $800.

Other Information Sources

Prism Break provides a well-researched list of software that can help you opt of of surveillance.

AlternativeTo provides lists of software that can replace your existing software with better, more open substitutes. This well-organized site allows people to vote on the software choices.

For password management, I like roboform password manager possibly with the relevant browser add-on to connect it to the browser. I use it for managing my website’s password at: https://savvycomsoftware.com/

Why do you prefer FastMail and Kolab over Proton in some of your other articles? What do you see as the pros/cons / advantages/disadvantages? Great site! Thanks for openly sharing all your knowledge, research and recommendations!

the prices for ThinkPenguin notebooks are between 700-900 us dollars before tax and the desktops are 500 u.s dollars before tax. does that seem pricey just to be sure Linux is installed on your computer?

I discovered GREYCODER about a month ago and I definitely appreciate all the research and thought that has been expended on a great many privacy and security topics … plus all contributions by many others in the comments! Thank you!

It is possible that the NSA has sophisticated de-encryption abilities. If you are concerned about this, I’d advise you to look for providers that offer high levels of encryption, and read up on other methods of obfuscation.

Can you provide a little more background on the comment about SPider Oak’s apps being problematical? Is it the app or the security that is an issue? Also, what is your opinion of CrashPlan? I’ve seen lots of good reviews about it as a backup service. Although it is not zero knowledge like SpiderOak or Seafile, it appears that you can generate an encryption key. Thanks, as always, for your good work!

What’s your opinion of 1Password as compared to LastPass? I haven’t used KeyPass, but one issue I have with LastPass is that it’s not intuitive in terms of ensuring that you are completely logged off when you close the browser window. It took me awhile to figure out how to set it up so that a login was required each time I re-opened the browser and even then it hasn’t been consistent in shutting down the app — which then leads to a security flaw.

Thanks for the reply; I’m on a Mac so have used 1Password for almost 10 years and love both the security and the support from the company itself. I like that it has a full featured app for mobile devices — recently my computer AND wireless external backup were stolen (along with all my credit cards) and having 1Password on my mobile was what enabled me to easily contact all the card companies, banks, etc., and get online access to my accounts.

I do use LastPass with Firefox on a friend’s computer where I occasionnally work. My experience has been that, when I reopen the browser, LP is still running, even if it’s been weeks since I accessed it before. Could just be that computer/browser, but I now manually log out each time before I close the browser itself. Apart from that I enjoy LP’s functionality, but feel a bit uncertain about it’s security.

For password management, I like Keepass http://keepass.info/, possibly with the relevant browser add-on to connect it to the browser.

As a mail provider, I recommend Posteo (http://www.posteo.de). It’s a German mail provider (Berlin) that takes privacy (and sustainability) very seriously. Cost: from 1 EUR/month (you can even pay cash).

When I was looking for a new email provider, I checked out Fastmail. One thing that I did not like about the service is that when using Thunderbird, they showed my real IP address (both my private IP address on my network as well as my public IP address) in the header information. For this reason, I would not recommend Fastmail.